Getting fired was the best thing that ever happened to these four women. Find out how an untimely layoff led each to a whole new career

Those words, uttered once by a former boss I really liked, rang in my ears on the Tuesday last spring when I was issued my recession-related pink slip. Of course, so did a lot of other things—fear, shame, the vertigo that comes with knowing your last paycheck is en route—and your future suddenly on a trajectory far less certain.

Like the women below, I bounced back with a vengeance, but the experience still shook me to the bottom of my soul. As did front-page photos, which appeared around the same time, of young bankers in suits and heels carting cardboard boxes from now-empty offices. The fact is, it's still a wild, wild economy out there. And it's easy to let your mind wander and wonder if you might be unceremoniously escorted from your workplace. The good news is that even if the worst comes to pass (or already has), there's hope.

The women here are proof positive that getting fired wasn't the most awful thing that could have happened. In fact, it was for the best. Being down and out led them to get in touch with what really mattered to them—and turn it into the sort of career that makes a person happy to get out of bed.

The Mother of Invention

Jamie Rubin, 30, returned to her job as a TV producer last December when her daughter was three months old. After three weeks back, her entire department was let go.

"I was caught by surprise. I had no idea what to do," she says. She realized searching for a new job with an infant at home would be tough, but she also had a mortgage to pay. In her case, solving an even more immediate problem—what to wear while breast-feeding—led her to her next step.

Rubin was given outplacement counseling by her company and landed in the hands of a good career counselor. At her counselor's behest, she enrolled in a class on becoming an entrepreneur. During her maternity leave, Rubin had had an inkling of an idea: fashionable T-shirts for mothers who were breast-feeding.

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"A lot of the apparel out there was really functional," she says. "The shirts had a line that cut right across the chest that would flip up, but when you're done, you're walking around with a line across your chest. It's like, what's up with that girl's shirt?"

Other than a life-long interest in shopping, she had no background in fashion, but she knew what she liked—a cute shirt that didn't scream "Hi, I'm nursing!" even to casual passersby.

She found a pattern maker on Craigslist and a website designer through LinkedIn. Then she took her samples to the Pump Station, a boutique in L.A. that also teaches about breast-feeding, which had been her go-to spot while pregnant. When the store offered to private-label the collection, it gave Rubin the validation she needed, and she decided to strike out on her own. Seemingly overnight, Milkstars was born.

But the path wasn't always smooth.

"There was a steep learning curve," she admits. "There were many times where I was like, `This is too hard—I'm going to quit.'" When her husband was laid off from his job in July, the pressure increased. "Outside of severance pay, this was our livelihood," she says.

But Rubin persisted, bolstered by feedback from women who said there's nothing else like this out there. A year later, she had launched a line sold nationwide.

"There are a lot of people like me who had an idea and just hired people to help them," she says. "I've never felt so on my game."

The Bag Lady

Lori Chalmers, 30, was also born creative. She chose to become a graphic designer because it was an art form that would allow her to collect a paycheck.

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She had always worked freelance, but then all of a sudden, in mid-2007, all the jobs dried up.

"It was just before Christmas when my last contract laid me off with a day's notice," says Chalmers. "I was stuck. As a freelancer you don't get severance packages. You don't get anything. That day I sat there and thought, What can I do to make money quickly?"

She'd started designing handbags in college as a hobby, drafting her own patterns and piecing together bags out of leather skirts and jackets she bought at Goodwill, but she'd never thought it was something she could do for profit. Then someone told her about Etsy, which had recently launched.

She set up a shop and started a free blog on eblogger through Google.

"I didn't have money for a website," she laughs. "I didn't have any money."

What she did have was a passion for fashion and a love of accessories. She named the line ChaCha for a childhood nickname based on her last name.

Soon she started seeing girls carrying her bags around her native Toronto. That was followed by an invitation to do an event at MuchMusic, the Canadian equivalent of the MTV Music Awards, where Fergie's stylist fell in love with her stuff.

Today she has a proper website, ChaChalifestyle.com, not to mention a steady celebrity clientele. Even Lady Gaga has been spotted sporting her bags. But the arc of her story also tends to intrigue her audience.

"People are always interested to hear that it's just me, and I grew a business," she says.

The Overnight Webpreneur

Rebecca Orlov got the boot from her job as a producer at an advertising agency "14 days into 2009," she says. But after 10 years in the industry, her first reaction was actually relief.

"It made me realize how unhappy I'd been in advertising," she says, even though it took a pink slip to help her come to the realization.

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Her passion had always been for home and design. In fact, she had 300 "inspiring" websites bookmarked in her browser the day she was let go. The year before, she had also started a small shelter blog called Loving.living.small, devoted to ideas to maximize a small living space. She had also started doing the occasional post for Apartmenttherapy.com, in L.A., where she lived.

"Interestingly, through these online outlets, I was connecting and e-meeting with new people who shared the same love of home and design," says Orlov. After meeting one of these people in April, at an interior design panel event, Orlov had a eureka moment.

"We were both surprised at the group's lack of understanding of what a blog was," she says. "I thought let's do our own panel and start something to help and encourage creative people to join the blogging community." Over lunch they hatched Blog Out Loud, a resource for anyone looking to gather information and inspiration to start a blog of her own.

Four weeks later, they held their first free offline event—a panel of successful bloggers sharing their stories and experiences with would-be newbies. Soon the events proliferated, and in the process Orlov made the transition.

Today she works with lifestyle companies and brands to help shape their online voice and social-media strategy.

While 2009 had been a bit of an uphill climb financially, it had also been, says Orlov, "the most inspiring year of my life."

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The Forward-Thinking Historian

Like newly minted mompreneur Jamie Rubin, Jennifer Campbell worked in TV—public television. She'd been a writer at a station for seven years, handling projects ranging from developing websites for young viewers to interviewing and writing profiles of prominent public figures. But slowly the station's funds were ebbing, and along with them, so did Campbell's job responsibilities.

"They gradually lost funding and resources were cut. The website was dwindling down to nothing, and I was editing PowerPoint slides," she says ruefully, "shifting bullet points around. I sort of saw the writing on the wall."

Still, she says, the day she actually lost her job "was a pretty big shock—the tears, the scene, being walked to HR."

But there were things Campbell wouldn't miss—her two-hour commute for one. Coincidentally, she recalls, a friend of hers had been killed by a drunken driver a few days before she was dismissed. Through the haze of her firing, a bitterly ironic thought bubbled up.

"Well, at least I won't be late for Michelle's funeral." After attending her friend's wake, Campbell had a revelation.

"At the funeral, I heard people talking about Michelle's life and her two kids and I thought, First of all, at least I'm alive, and second of all, is this really what it's all about? Am I really living the life I want to?"

She did a lot of soul-searching and an equal amount of nail-biting before getting an idea that would use her writing skills—the same ones she'd developed during years of interviewing public figures on the job—in a way that would help her carve out a whole new career.

"Doing the interviews, I was always looking for the story behind the story," she says. In fact, a while back, she'd even begun interviewing people closer to home.

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"I got interested in family history when my father died, and I realized I knew virtually nothing about his younger years," says Campbell. So she brought her tape recorder home in the hopes of preserving her mother's stories.

"She loved talking about her heritage," she says. And it turns out, Campbell had had the urge in the nick of time. After about four sessions, her mother began showing signs of dementia.

"After just a few interviews," says Campbell, "[My mother] clammed up. The vault was closed."

But that's when, for her, a lightbulb went on.

"I thought, maybe if I feel this lousy about losing all of these family stories, I could help other people who do too?"

She googled and discovered an association of personal historians 500 people strong, doing just what she wanted to—recording people's personal histories. With the baby-boomer generation aging, it was, Campbell soon surmised, a rare thing in a down economy: a growing industry. She set to work, and soon clients were coming out of the woodwork.

"It's really cool asking about people's lives," she says, "the details that no one has ever asked them before. Our elders have been witness to so many changes. Tragedies like the Holocaust and wonderful inventions. They always mention the polio vaccine. It totally revolutionized everything."

Now her favorite part of her new self-created vocation is not only being a witness to history but preserving family memories for posterity.

In fact, a year later, Campbell runs Heritage Memoirs, binding salvaged memories into customized books and recording them on DVDs.

"It's the best thing that ever happened to me," she says. "I gave up a small gray cubicle across from the staff kitchen and beside the freight elevator, a job that was increasingly becoming meaningless to me, a two-hour commute and the stifling feeling that I was selling my soul."

Put it that way and losing a job sounds more like finding a blessing—one Campbell is convinced will have a long shelf life.

"Years from now, a great-grandson will be able to pull down a book from a shelf," she says. "And my work will be in there."

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